Fact-Check: Photo From Shimla Falsely Linked to Uttarakhand Bus Accident

The photo shows a similar incident from February 2022, when a bus fell into a gorge near Shimla, Himachal Pradesh.

The photo shows a bus accident in Himachal Pradesh.

(Photo: Twitter/Altered by The Quint)

A photo of a bus in a hillside gorge is being shared on social media, where users are sharing it as a photo of a recent bus accident in Uttarkashi district, Uttarakhand.

A bus carrying 28 pilgrims and two others from Madhya Pradesh's Panna fell into a gorge in Uttarakhand's Uttarkashi district on Sunday, 5 June. The mishap claimed 26 lives.

However, the photograph shows a similar incident from February 2022, when a Himachal Road Transport Corporation (HRTC) bus fell into a gorge in Rampur near Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. All passengers suffered minor and serious injuries, and no lives were lost.

CLAIM

The photo is being shared with Hindi text, which claims that the photograph shows the bus carrying 25 tirthankars (pilgrims) from Panna, Madhya Pradesh, which fell into a gorge.

An archived version of this tweet can be seen here.

(Source: Twitter/Altered by The Quint)

Archived versions of more posts with similar claims can be seen here, here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We ran a reverse image search on the photograph, and were led to an Amar Ujala report dated 14 February 2022, which carried the same photograph as the one in the claim.

The article was published in February this year.

(Source: Amar Ujala/Altered by The Quint)

According to the report, a Himachal Road Transport Corporation bus carrying 33 persons on board crashed and fell into a 200 meter-deep gorge near Gaso bridge, near National Highway 5 (NH5) near Rampur, Himachal Pradesh on 14 February.

The bus hit eight trees as it crashed, which broke its fall and prevented the bus from turning over.

News`18 Hindi carried a photo story on the accident, noting that 29 passengers suffered minor injuries, while four sustained serious ones.

The story mentioned than the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), army and police personnel worked with locals to bring all passengers to safety.

As per a Hindustan Times report, the cause of the incident was not known.

BUS CARRYING PILGRIMS FALLS INTO GORGE IN UTTARKASHI, KILLS 26

A bus carrying 28 pilgrims and two other people from Madhya Pradesh's Panna district fell into a gorge near Uttarkashi district's Damta area in Uttarakhand on Sunday, 5 June.

The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) teams arrived at the spot for safety and rescue efforts, which concluded the following morning. 26 bodies were recovered from the site and all injured were moved to hospitals for treatment, reported ANI.

You can watch Quint Hindi's report on the incident here:

Clearly, the photo doesn't show the recent bus accident in Uttarkashi, Uttarakhand. It shows a similar incident from February this year in Himachal Pradesh, where there was no loss of lives.

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